Go Paint!

Thursday

Sep 5, 2013 at 5:00 AM

For centuries, artists have gone to Italy to create art, to study, to be inspired. In April 2012, a group of Worcester Art Museum (WAM) students and their instructor, Jo Ellen Reinhardt, took up their brushes, palettes and easels and joined that rich tradition of artists looking to experience what the Old World has to offer. Some 40 or 50 of the resulting pieces will be on display in “Paintings of Italy,” at the Sprinkler Factory in Worcester starting September 7.

The artists – Pat Clifford, Susan Cook, Pamela Haynes, Mary Hollingsworth, Sarah Mattern, Mary-Jo McKeon and Sharyn Orfalea – have varied backgrounds. Though longtime students, some regard painting as a hobby. For others, it is something more. Haynes has shown her work professionally. Mattern, her daughter, studied art at Franklin & Marshall College and in Florence, Italy and has a Master's from the New England School of Art & Design. Hollingsworth’s watercolor prints are available at Bhadon Gift Gallery in Worcester. All the artists have taken classes with Reinhardt at WAM. Most of the works in the show are watercolors, though there are oils and photographs as well.

Reinhardt, who studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and the New School of Classical Art, teaches Watercolor, Landscape Painting, Oil Painting, Portrait and Figure Drawing and Painting at WAM, and teaches Figure Drawing and is an adjunct faculty member at WPI. Her work is for sale at Gallery Antonia in Chatham, Mass.

The group based themselves in Cortona, a walled Etruscan city in Tuscany, taking day trips to Pienza, Assisi and Isola Maggiore, a small island once used by St. Francis as a sanctuary, before finishing up in Florence. They stayed in a convent that is now a residence for retired nuns, getting around by taxis, trains, boats and on foot. They sometimes worked on location – Reinhardt and McKeon once finding themselves painting in the rain, a rather wet form of the plein air they had sought – and at other times painted from pictures they took. Despite “twinges of guilt photographing people,” they found most individuals receptive. Mattern even had to field offers for a painting from several locals as she was painting it.

You can all but feel the sunlight and the springtime breezes in the paintings. The simplicity of village life and the tranquility of the Tuscan countryside shine through. The subjects are many: A man hoeing, a deserted street, flowerpots, a fruit stand, alleyways on the island, a café in a stone courtyard and much more. Often the paintings are as much about the play of light as they are about specific objects: The way light hits a door and a nearby bicycle, or the contrast between light and shadow in a view of an open doorway and the darkness beyond.

For about seven years, WAM has organized such trips for its students. Groups have gone to New Mexico, France, Greece, China and Ireland. When they “take courses over a long period of time, students get really good at what they’re doing,” says Marcia Lagerwey, WAM’s head of education. The museum has helped provide students with an “opportunity for an intense learning experience, seeing and experiencing a whole new landscape with an expert instructor.” This trip was organized in conjunction with Toscana Americana, a company run by former Gardner, Mass. resident Patrick Mahoney, who lives in Cortona and served as tour guide.

Cards, prints and some originals will be for sale at the show. Musicians Rich Given and Lisa Kempskie will perform at the opening.

The group says it was a “whirlwind tour,” but even with all the cultural attractions, beautiful flowers and great food and wine, in the end, it was all about the painting.

Paintings of Italy opens with a reception on Saturday, September 7 from 5-8 p.m. at the Sprinkler Factory, 38 Harlow St., Worcester. The exhibit will be open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays, from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. through September 29.